


Good Christian Women

by FB Wickersham (perpetfic)



Series: Hale County Township [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Female-Centric, Gen, Original Character(s), POV Female Character, hale county township, literary fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 09:59:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3892111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/FB%20Wickersham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Susan's the newish preacher in Hale County Township. Alice has been around awhile, but neither will ever be natives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Christian Women

"So..."

Susan knows the questions before she gets asked, used to the length of the 'o' signaling, like a bell for dinner, the inappropriate nature of the question to come.

"Nina mentioned you're divorced." It's not phrased as a question for once, and Susan is grateful. At least Alice isn't trying to pretend like she hasn't already invaded Susan's privacy, isn't trying to disguise her curiosity with false innocence.

"Yes," Susan says. "I am."

It's been four years since the divorce, twelve since the wedding. Seven since Susan--apparently starring in a movie of her own life without realizing--walked in on Martin and HER. That's how Susan's always thought of HER. All caps. Extra emphasis, the interested third party who helped detonate what was already lit for explosion.

"Four years now," Susan offers without prompting. Giving a glimpse of soft underbelly to see what Alice will do with it, her survival instinct worn down over the last few months of passive and pointed questions from various people at the church.

"That must have been difficult," Alice says, off-script again. This isn't how this conversation goes. No one ever asks Susan if it was difficult or tells her it must have been. They watch her instead, pick and prod over every crevice she has, searching for the answer to a question they do and desperately don't want to ask.

_How does a minister wreck a marriage?_

_And if you can't hold it together, how can you tell us we can?_

"In hindsight," Susan says slowly because Alice's face is open and understanding, her eyes resting firmly on Susan's face, not trawling for the flaw that clearly caused the collapse of a relationship, "There were cracks from the very start, but I thought--we thought--they got patched as we went."

"A prototype assembly," Alice says. Alice is an engineer who occasionally delivers beautiful, short guest sermons about how God is present in the head of every screw. "You build it, you test it, you decide to keep it, and you fix it as you go."

"That was the plan, yes."

Alice smiles, warm and soothing, and Susan wonders if she ever looks so serene when talking to people who come to her for counseling. Probably not to any of the married couples, she thinks, but she can't really blame them for that. "But sometimes the prototype breaks down, and you never ordered the parts to fix it because you changed assemblies as you kept building."

Susan thinks about that. "You would have been very useful during my marriage counseling."

Alice shakes her head. "I was getting divorced around the same time. I used to be Catholic."

 _I used to be Catholic_ is shorthand for a few of Susan's parishioners. Two broke with the church for moral reasons. One doesn't believe it's right to pray to saints. One had an abortion, and now Alice, the divorcee.

"Roman Catholic?" Susan guesses.

Alice smiles. "All the way back to the old country. You don't get divorced in my family. You make due."

Susan's family is the opposite type. You get divorced as you get bored. It was more of a shock Susan got married than that it ended. It was an even bigger shock she went into ministry, the family generally a hodge-podge of half-believers and the-flowers-are-pretty-at-Christmas type of churchgoers.

"His name was Martin," Susan says. "He was religious, like me--though not quite enough to feel a calling. When it fell apart, I think we both tried about three-quarters to make it work again, but there's no coming back from some things." From HER, Susan thinks, and she wonders if the capitalization will fall apart when she enters year five of her comfortable singledom which she looks forward to rolling into a proper spinsterhood in another fifteen. Maybe she’ll get some cats or numerous caftans. She hasn’t quite decided.

"Luke," Alice offers. "We wanted to have sex, and we'd been dating awhile, so we got married. It was a terrible reason to have a marriage, but we managed it all right for awhile." Alice doesn't look away from Susan when she says, "but then he started drinking, and when he drinks, he yells, and I refused to allow that."

The agony she must have been though, Susan thinks. No one ever understands why a woman leaves a man who yells. _Yelling_? she can practically hear her mother say. _Let him yell. At least he's not hitting you_. "Martin cheated," Susan says. "And the trust didn't come back."

"Is that why you're here now?" Alice asks. "Nina mentioned the church you came from was where you were when you were married."

"They didn't force me out," Susan says, a technical truth that still tastes wrong in her mouth. No one requested she leave, but there was a coldness on Sundays, a chill that ran through the mid-week Bible Study, a bitter wind that sometimes howled through the fellowship hall during VBS. No one ever told Susan she'd soiled herself, ruined her reputation, ruined their idea of a minister, but she saw it sometimes when she gave communion, especially from the older women whose marriages she knew were harsh and unhappy because they'd told her so in one-on-one counseling before she'd had to tell the board she and Martin were divorcing. None of them came back for counseling after that, betrayal that she’d choose happiness over marriage too much for them to bear. Susan still prays for every one of them.

"I'm glad you're here," Alice says. "It's nice to have someone who understands."

No one's said that to her in the last four years, Susan thinks. She smiles at Alice because she's too choked up to speak, uncertain there are words adequate enough for the amount of thanks she has for that sentence.

"More coffee?" Alice asks as she stands, tucking her crutches under both arms.

"Oh, let me," Susan says, halfway up before Alice thumps her in the calf with one of the crutches and gives her a look.

"I don't know how you do it in those big city churches, pastor, but out here in the country, when the preacher comes calling, you put on some manners."

"I'm delivering communion because you have a broken leg," Susan argues.

Alice tuts, waving one crutch in a wobbly, dismissive arc before setting it back on the floor and rounding the kitchen island. "I only didn't come in because the medication makes me woozy, and I didn't want to worry I'd upchuck on whatever hat Miss Mavis is wearing this week."

Miss Mavis is eighty-two years old, has always lived in this little town, and has only a single rumor to mar her reputation. The rumor--so Susan's been told by four separate people--is that she burned down her neighbor's house by request years and years ago, but Susan's certain it's folklore run amok. Miss Mavis is the last of a literal dying breed--the sweet as sugar Southern Lady who still wears gloves to church.

"It was yellow," Susan says. "With sequins."

"Oh, sweet Jesus, she's discovered sequins," Alice says and laughs. She doesn't apologize for taking the Lord's name in vain, and Susan appreciates it as much as she appreciates Alice's quiet understanding of her marital situation. "My brother, Leon,” Alice continues, “he came to visit a few years back for Easter--it was just after I got here--and he said she looked like a decorative teapot, and forgive me, but I have never gotten the image out of my head."

Susan laughs at that. Miss Mavis is bird breasted and stout, and it's common for her to use her walking stick as a pointer while her other hand rests on her hip. "Well, if it was said without malice, he's not incorrect."

Alice chuckles and hobbles back over with the coffee pot, filling both their cups and glancing at the coffee maker before pulling a fancy, wrought iron trivet from the center of the table and putting the pot down on it. "I've gone over the mountain to see what I can see," she says, "and I have decided it's not worth a second trip."

"Is anyone else looking in on you?" Susan asks. "I'd hate to leave you with cold coffee to deal with." It's not that Susan won't try to insist on putting the coffee pot back where it belongs before she leaves; it's that she's learned already that if you're a visitor at a home in this town, it's gauche to even try to help around the house, and the way you try to get around that is to phrase offers as statements of your own personal preference.

"Tabatha comes over in the evenings to play cards on Sundays. She'll take care of it."

Tabatha is--near as Susan can tell--roughly the same age as Alice and herself. She makes it to church about every Sunday out of three and has a singing voice like a haymaker punch: wild, uncoordinated, and fatiguing, but when it hits, you feel it in your back teeth. Susan adores it, feeling like she can see the glory of God in the air when Tabatha hits the right notes every now and again.

"I'm not keeping you, am I?" Alice asks. "Don't think you have to drink that second cup just because I poured it."

Small town manners are still something Susan hasn't quite gotten the rhythm of. There are the basic rules: call before you come over, compliment the well-kept house, learn the names of the children in descending order, and generally expect that the person you're talking to is related to the person three houses over. It's the unspoken, tiny social niceties Susan still hasn't perfected. Like letting other people put the sugar in her coffee or take her plate from the table. Like having a second cup of coffee and wondering if Alice is asking her to leave in the polite, cryptic way of so many of the people in town.

"You're not keeping me," Susan replies immediately. "But please let me know if I'm keeping you."

Alice laughs. Full on, throws her head back and laughs. "Preacher, I promise, that was not code for get out of my house."

"That transparent, am I?"

"Every new preacher is," Alice assures her. "I take it as a good sign, really. You want a preacher you can see through a little."

Susan thinks about that as she sips her coffee. She finds she likes the idea but doesn't have an answer for the statement itself. "Well," she finally settles on, and Alice grins.

"You'll fit in yet," she says. "Even if it's just with the rest of us recent arrivals."

“Four years is recent?”

“Around here, it’s practically brand spanking new,” Alice replies. “Anything before twenty seems to rattle everyone a little.”

The first time Susan had stepped into the grocery store, she’d been openly stared at by no less than six people. Three had smiled; the other three had not. Two of them, Susan discovered on her first Sunday at the pulpit, are Sunday regulars but skip Bible study because Wednesday is their poker night. They play penny ante aces wild and five-card stud. Susan’s been invited twice but had to turn it down both times because there’s no assistant pastor to run the study.

“I got a lot of looks when I first got here,” Susan tells Alice. “Why was that?”

“We don’t get a lot of out-of-towners,” Alice says. “Most everyone who comes in is related to someone who’s already here, so most of the people here have known them most their lives. Someone new, like you, you’re a rarity. I got the same treatment when I moved here. Spent weeks with people asking me if I was related to so-and-so.”

“No one asked me that.”

“It takes about a week before they ask. You moved in on a Thursday, so you were up at the pulpit and answering the question before anyone could ask.”

Susan thinks about that. Alice pours herself another cup of coffee, holds up the pot for Susan, but Susan shakes her head no. “No, but thank you,” she says. “Am I accepted?” she asks.

“As near as you will be. They won’t ever exclude you, but they’ll forget to tell you things.”

“Like what?”

“Anything they’d put in a prayer request. They’ll put it in the request, they’ll thank you for remembering it when you lead prayer, but they’ll assume you’ll hear which way it goes in the end.”

“How?”

“Good-natured gossip, near as I can tell,” Alice says. “I think it took everyone about a year to realize I didn’t know anyone, so they finally started stopping me in the store to fill me in.” Alice grins and glances down at her leg. “Seems like a lot of information you don’t need until you’re flat on your back from one thing or another and could use a few neighbors to check in on you.”

Susan thinks of the rumor on Miss Mavis. “I think they may have started already,” she says. “At least, I’m getting the old gossip.”

“It’s been how long since you got here?”

“Eight and a half months.”

“That’s pretty good,” Alice says.

“They told me Miss Mavis burned down a house.”

Alice laughs. “Oh, I like that one. I asked Miss Mavis, actually.”

“What’d she say?” Susan asks.

“She says she did it, but half the people you ask say they don’t actually believe her. They say it was done by whoever owned the place. No one remembers her name. Some unmarried daughter of a long-dead couple.”

“Why?”

“Insurance fraud is the favorite, but that’s unsubstantiated as well.”

Susan thinks about that as she finishes her coffee and considers a third cup.

“You visiting anyone else today?” Alice asks.

“No, you were my last call today.”

“Have another cup then. I’ve got some whiskey over the sink if you want to really cut loose.”

Susan can’t help grinning. “That’s all I need on my record right now. That divorced Preacher over at First Presbyterian got liquored up visiting poor Alice and her broken leg and drove herself right into a ditch.”

“And that Alice,” Alice says, “you know how she can be, buying beer by the case like she does.” She shakes her head. “I drink one every night after work and two on Saturdays if I’m home for the evening. The way some of the elder choir look at me, you’d think I was buying a case a day.”

“Well, liquor is the devil’s potion.”

“Oh, what isn’t these days?”

Susan laughs with a depth and range she hasn’t in months if not years. She raises her coffee cup in Alice’s direction. “Thank you,” she says. “This is really nice.”

“The pleasure’s all mine,” Alice says, and they clink their glasses and drink.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The Hale County Township stories are connected, but none are sequels or direct relations to one another. They're sort of like all the third cousins at a family reunion.


End file.
